#crime classics

Tomorrow, the eighth season of Down These Mean Streets kicks off with one of history’s most notorious murderers - Jack the Ripper. The mystery man’s reign of terror inspired several old time radio mysteries. We’ll hear two, beginning with  The Mollé Mystery Theatre and the hunt for the Ripper in twentieth century Chicago. Then we’ll hear Crime Classics with a “you are there” account of the Ripper’s murder spree.

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A new season of Down These Mean Streets kicks off in August with five new episodes - including our 400th podcast episode! Plus, stay tuned every Wednesday for bonus midweek old time radio comedy shows.

August 2nd - Jack the Ripper is on the prowl in a pair of radio mysteries from the Mollé Mystery Theatre and Crime Classics.

August 9th - Vincent Price returns as “the Robin Hood of modern crime” in The Saint.

August 16th - We head back to the old west for John Dehner as Paladin in Have Gun - Will Travel.

August 23rd - Willard Waterman starred for years as The Great Gildersleeve, but the comedy star also showed off his dramatic chops. We’ll hear him as a detective hunting a killer in the tropics in Escape and he plays a man on the wrong side of the law in a strange story by The Whistler.

August 30th - For our 400th show, I’ll go back and play the first old time radio shows I heard - the shows that started a love of the golden age of radio!

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Happy Birthday, Lou Merrill (April 1, 1912 – April 7, 1963)

Merrill worked primarily in radio, though he made television appearances and popped up in some films, including a memorable small part in Orson Welles’ The Lady from Shanghai. On radio, he was heard on comedies, dramas, westerns, and thrillers - everything from Suspense to The Six Shooter to Broadway is My Beat. 

REVIEW: The Corpse in the Waxworks

Honestly, the title is enough to intrigue, but Carr manages to wind a cracking good yarn around a macabre crime scene. A young woman is found dead in the Seine. She was last seen going in to view the Gallery of Horrors wax museum. Detective Henri Bencolin, an examining magistrate, is the intrepid investigator. His ingenious exploits are related by American writer Jeff Marle, a sort of Watson to…

REVIEW: The Dead Letter

I cannot get enough of Victorian sensation novels. With mistaken identities, missing inheritances, mysterious disappearances, these stories were almost like the soap operas of their day (of course, unlike today’s version, these wrap up loose ends and have a relatively sensible plot). The Argyll family and Richard Redfield, its oldest family friend, are awaiting the arrival of Henry Moreland one…